Research

Welcome to the Yu group where principles of protein folding and assembly are applied to develop new materials and biotechnologies, ranging from piezoelectric fibers to tissue engineering scaffolds and disease targeting molecules. We are multidisciplinary scientists and engineers, who are interested in designing new peptide/protein architectures that are of high scientific values, as well as identifying and solving real-world "materials" and "bioengineering" problems that have great potentials to impact multiple engineering and medical fields.

Please click on the following links to read more about the major research projects in our group:

We are actively looking for postdocs with expertise in peptide / bio-conjugation chemistry. This position is for current NIH (R01 and R21) research projects on developing new types of collagen hybridizing peptides for applications in disease/injury detection and drug delivery. There is also opportunity to learn about tech transfer and start-up company as our group has strong on-going commercialization efforts. Candidates with PhD degrees and expertise in peptide / bioconjugate chemistry, recombinant protein, tissue engineering, ECM biology, pharmarcological science, polymer chemistry, bio/nano materials or molecular imagingare welcome to apply.

We welcome passionate and highly motivated researchers to join our team!The postdoctoral fellows will work in a brand new lab space (Sorenson Molecular Biotechnology Building) with state of the art research facilities, and with many collaboration opportunities both within the U of Utah (biomedical engineering and pharmaceutical science departments) and Johns Hopkins University.

Interested candidates should send a CV which includes summary of research experience and interests to Dr. Michael Yu at: michael.yu@utah.edu

3Helix and Collagen Hybridizing Peptide

Interested in trying our technology in your study? The research reagents, 5-FAMand biotin labeled CHPs(Collagen Hybridizing Peptides) developed by our group are available for purchase on www.3helix.com.

-August, 2018, Paper submitted to Biomaterials has been accepted. Congrats to Luke, Yang, and Bumjin.

-August, 2018, Collaborative work (Stephen Weiss at U of Michigan) on matrix remodeling in tumor has been accepted to Developmental Cell.

-July, 2018, ONR grant has been renewed for the next 3 years. This grant supports development of piezoelectric fibers produced by electrospinning helical biopolymers as well as acoustic sensors based on piezo-composites and additive manufacturing of nano/micro fibers.

-July, 2018, New NIH R21 grant has been funded. This grant is on sustained intra-vitreal delivery of antibody drugs mediated by ECM binding. We thank Hoa (who is now working at Beckman Coulter) for all the preliminary data used in this proposal.

-May, 2018, New NIH R01 grant on detecting mechanical damage in collagen by CHP has finally been funded! This is a collaborative project between Yu group and Weiss group at the BIOEN, with total funding amount around 2 million.

- Nov, 2017, Our first paper on nano-fiber conjugated collagen hybridizing peptide has been published in JACS (Congrats to Hoa!)

- July, 2017, Dr. Yu's presentation in GRC collagen conference was a great success-a lot of interests from the collagen community.